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This video is an interview with Matt Heusser, who makes a good living as an independent IT consultant. He says many other people who are currently pounding out code or performing other routine computer-oriented tasks can become independent, too. He's not selling a course or anything here, just passing on some advice to fellow Slashdot readers. He's written up some of this advice in a series of four articles: Getting People to Throw Money At You; How to become IT Talent; That Last Step to Become ‘Talent’ In IT; and The Schwan’s Solution. He also gave a speech last November titled Building your reputation through creative disobedience. (The link is to a 50 minute video of that speech.) Anyway, we figure quite a few Slashdot readers are at least as smart as Matt and may want to take some career steps similar to the ones he has taken. In today's video, he gives you some ideas about how to stop being an IT worker and how to become IT talent instead.

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Robin: Good day. This is Robin Miller -- 'Roblimo' on Slashdot. We are here with Matt Heusser. And he recently wrote a thing about how, instead of trying to have 20 years of Java experience, 15 years of booby on rails or whatever, so you can get past resume filters, you should become so specialized that when they look, there’s nobody else like you, so they have to pay you extra. Personally, I think for people in IT that that is a really good deal. Let’s let Matt expound upon it. Hi, Matt.

Matt: Hi, Rob. Thanks for the introduction and thanks for having me on your show. I am a consulting software tester. And specifically, lately I have been working with projects that are between 30- and 200-person years that are a little bit challenged. Maybe they are large for that type of organization or something that hasn’t been done before.

The organization wants to get it up to speed, and they usually call in a consultant, but what’s the consultant going to do, he is going to pull everybody out into meetings, and then he is going to create a report, he is going to deliver the report, and the one thing you know when he delivers the report, is a week later that will be starting. So I work on delivery consulting. It is very, very highly specialized niche. I am not really a developer, yet I seem to have plenty of work. And I know a lot of people that are C++ developers or Java developers or one particular technology specialists that they struggle. And it is exactly what you said. So when a company has a problem, they want to find someone that could solve that problem right now.

Robin: Right.

Matt: And it is common to find people with specialties in performance engineering. That we kind of understand. You bring in the guy to get Oracle up to speed; he is going to be onsite a week; he is going to get you running again. And I think that most general IT professionals, doesn’t matter what you are doing, as long as it is a couple of steps past basic helpdesk work, you’d probably know how to do something, as someone you care a lot about. So you got to find out what that thing is and figure how to market it. The third piece on top of that is you want to go independent. And that’s what really interests people.

Robin: Are you saying that we shouldn’t all aspire to working for Gigantic Megacorp with free, well... with included healthcare and all, like that is not a good idea?

Matt: You give up a lot of freedoms and independence when you do that. I mean when you go work for Megacorp, you are working on the projects you are assigned to work on. The last time – when I was working as a fulltime employee, I would get assignments that couldn’t be successful and that was extremely emotionally painful for me. There are other tradeoffs involved in becoming independent.

Most Americans are socialized against being independent. They are socialized to get a good job and work really hard and advance in the system. I think most of us agree that today the system is broken in many ways. And as an independent, when I am given an assignment that can’t be successful, I can say ‘good luck’ or maybe I could help you find someone else who might be able to take that, I am not going to do this. And that is perfectly okay. I didn’t take the job. It is not like a terminable offense or anything like that. That’s just part of part of business.

Now I find that much more satisfying, much more acceptable to me personally than the corporate America thing. But especially because my business model is so niche. And if I wanted to be a general Java programmer I’d be perfectly happy. I think I could go work for Intuit or a company like that and be satisfied. But I like doing these things that work in small doses and small batches for a little bit at a time. I like the variety. It is just my temperament.

Robin: So what you are saying is it takes a certain temperament to do as you are doing. Maybe not everybody’s suited for it. What about the people who *do* want a job where they have regular hours and all that. What about that?

Matt: It is really interesting. When you look at the history of, say, the United States of America. If you had gone back to 1850, maybe 1800 and talked to people about getting a job, many of them would be surprised, ‘what does that mean?’ right. We are talking about farmers that provide their own living for themselves on a sustenance type. The majority of the population in the United States in 1845 is agrarian. Or you go further back, and you see the trappers, right? These people are going out in the wilderness and providing their own living. That was how it was done. That was the vast majority. The people that wanted – you couldn’t find an 8 to 5 job outside the military in 1825 in the United States.

So, mostly through socialization and the school system, and through time, through industrialization, industrial revolution, we’ve inculcated this desire in the American people, for the most part now, most people want a job. I don’t think that is nature, right? I think that is nurture. So there are some people who don’t want to change, and have this idea that they want a job. Then go get a job you know. I am not trying to change anyone that doesn’t want to be changed. If the argument is that that’s most people by nature, we could debate that; that is really philosophy, right?

Robin: You know, jobs. Government jobs started immediately. There were toll collectors, and of course the post office. The post office was a great thing. Benjamin Franklin. It was subsidized and yet it brought our country together, it disseminated information, newspapers, books always got a cheap rate, they still do; and you know, there were mail carriers. And they worked even in bad weather, remember? And of course, there were also postmasters. Man, a postmaster was an appointed position. People went crazy trying to get that postmaster job. It was a sinecure for life. You can lean on the counter and everybody in the little town would come over and give you all the gossip, and you know, maybe bring some booze. And people, remember in 1825, drank way more than would be acceptable today. But they did like jobs when they could get them. They worked, the guys on the barges, the sailors, these were all people who worked for a living.

Matt: Yeah, but if you look at the percentage of those jobs relative to the entire overall economy, Peter Drucker’s research showed that it was after the American Civil War that we had rapid massive expansion in the bureaucracy. In fact most of Peter Drucker’s research said that management wasn’t really invented as a science until after that time period because there just weren’t that many jobs to manage.

Robin: So we got into the thing after the Civil War where Peter Drucker and the science of management, that we managed and now today we have people who are worker bees, the vast majority of Americans are worker bees. What about people like that? Can someone who is highly niche specialized do better finding a paid job, a salaried job than someone who is just your Java programmer?

Matt: Yeah, they are really hard to get. In the US they require credentials. So if you want to work in the traditional system, you want to have a job as an employee, and you are really good at something, you need generally speaking, this is just off the top of my head, I wasn’t prepared for this spot.

Robin: It’s all right.

Matt: But you generally need a PhD or equivalent, right? So if you want to do research for Microsoft on some very, very complex mathematical equations, you optimize graphical rendering, for example, right. Microsoft has a research division and they will hire you to do that, but you need to have a PhD, usually from a top tier university. So there is a ladder of credentials you need to climb and you can get there through publishing, you can write books, if you are first to market, right?

If you are someone maybe not a Larry and Sergey level, but you invent like a Hotmail or Salesforce, you are the primary technical driver and cofounder of a large – medium sized to large enterprise and big enough to go public, get your name recognized and you can get a job as a professor somewhere teaching a very highly specialized field. But at that point, you don’t really need money, right? If you can write open source applications or contribute to open source in a significant way that makes something different, especially if a company wants it, right? So here is an example. You write an open source logistics and tracking system that plugs into a couple of major public systems that allows you to optimize and shave 1% or 2% off, a nickel here, a penny there, right?

Robin: Yeah.

Matt: But you get a company like Delta or United or Whirlpool interested in your software packages, it is terribly niche, logistics for Fortune 50 companies or something that have logistics problems -- Microsoft doesn’t have this kind of problems. They are hardly even shipping CDs any more -- but a company like that interested in it, and they start to use your software, and they get stuck for natural reasons, they want to extend it in ways that you didn’t design it to do. Well they are going to have to hire somebody, and how many people are going to be able to do that? It is going be like five guys and you are the number one choice.

Training is its own bag. I found that actually training is easier to sell than consulting.

Robin: Really?

Matt: Yeah, yeah. Most organizations will say, “We know we have a weakness in X, we’ve identified weakness in X, we want to develop skills in Y, can you come train us?” Or you can do it in conferences, but if you do it at conferences, the conference company that is doing the research there, assembling all of the clients for you there, getting the facilities for you, they are doing all the credit card paperwork for you. So, because the conference company does all the work, they are going to get the most money.

One more thing that I should mention about is there is a lot more to talk about being independent, and we could do it this for hours, but one big differentiator is you have to find the gigs, which unless you have some sort of magical funnel system, like you invented some big open source system that people have a demand for and you have to find people that don’t know about you, and tell them about your research. And there is a lot to that. There’s marketing. There’s making people aware that you exist and they come to you. And that kind of thing.

And something really strange happened to me a few years ago. When I was working in corporate America, I would get feedback that I needed to work on my people skills. This was relatively constant for several years working for a large company. And I couldn’t figure it out. I read Dale Carnegie, which is, How to Win Friends and Influence People, right? I read the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I read and read. I went to the library and brought home every book about people skills; I read books about how to make small talk, right? Because I don’t know how to talk about golf or football or any of that stuff, the weather. I don’t talk about any of that stuff. I know how to talk about the work. And I am pretty good at the work.

And I am a decent human being, like I have a family, I am not living in my grandmother’s basement, right? But I kept getting this feedback. And through that process I think I really and genuinely did improve on those skills to the point that after I went independent, at a rather large conference, the program chair described me as ‘crazy social’.

Robin: As what?

Matt: Crazy social. "And there’s Matt Heusser, he is crazy social, you guys should work with him." I am trying to figure how that came to be because I needed to work on my people skills. I think when I was in corporate America, I was put in an environment where very powerful people wanted to hear me say ‘yes,’ and the laws of physics and my own integrity meant the answer had to be ‘no.’ There was no way I could ‘people skill’ my way out of that. I tried every ninja fu move, so it depends, what are your requirements, are the requirements flexible, or what happens if we don’t hit the deadline? Or whatever it was, right? But they wanted to hear ‘yes’ and I said ‘no’ because it wasn’t going to happen. And when people want you to lie to them, and you refuse, the culture can’t admit what is really going on. I think you are going to get the sort of ‘you-need-to-improve-your-people-skills’ feedback. But the good news is: I really did actually improve my people skills through that process and it is part of what makes me successful or at least I have been relatively successful.

Robin: Do your kids get food to eat every day?

Matt: Yeah. No, we are doing really well. I don’t want to be presumptuous.

Robin: So what you are saying is, are you telling me that people, are you telling us that people skills are important even if our basic job; writing, video, programming, whatever, is not a people skill job; you are telling me it is important?

Matt: I think you need to have, you have heard of the two-out-of-three rule? Right?

Robin: No.

Matt: You can be friendly, you can be on time, and you can do good work. Three things, right? And you only need two. So if you are on time and do good work, you’d probably keep a job. But you are not going to get promoted. Right?

Robin: Okay.

Matt: And if you ever have problems with deadlines, you have problems with the quality of your work, then friendliness is sort of the stick that people fall back on, it is nice to have that stick in your arsenal.

Nobody is likely to become a competitor based on a slashdot post. Any number of people are likely to purchase something from his site based on a slashdot post (he is, in fact, selling things, despite your claim to the contrary). Nothing wrong with people buying his stuff or him advertising, but it feels pretty sleazy in this context.

Capitalism depends on the unrestricted flow of capital, equipment, and expertise. I'm always amused that employers are all for being able to hire and fire people at will, but piss all over themselves in fear when people demand to see what other employees make.

They do? It would seem it's more like they'd just say "Sorry, I'm not going to tell you". They might get antsy if employees start talking about it among themselves, but they can't really forbid it. Best they can do is create a "silo" culture where developers don't talk; but that's rather cutting off their nose to spite their face.

Small point of order: The reason for that minor (at best) "fear" is because it causes a shitload of internal strife, a massive amount of resentment between employees, and overall, unless the salary is structured and/or standardized, it wrecks morale. Well, at least it does all of this for anyone not making the biggest salary in the department.

Incidentally, the opposite of being able to hire/fire at will is being able to apply-for/leave a job at will. That is, you're not forced to sign a contract that says y

Incidentally, the opposite of being able to hire/fire at will is being able to apply-for/leave a job at will. That is, you're not forced to sign a contract that says you have to stay - you can find/get a better job and leave your current employer no matter what, and at any time.

Opposite? Really? A fair contract gives the employee and employer the same notice period. If you want to be able to get rid of me overnight, I demand the right to leave overnight if something better comes up. So to me these are the same thing, not opposites....

I can say with 90% certainty that I will be at my current job for the next two years. I can find a new job in a couple weeks in my market since I keep my skills up to date with what is most in demand. Have a good laugh about how I am just a tech hopping shill or whatever, but I call it "job security". A quality developer can become proficient in a platform in ~6-12 months. With standard full time employment that lasts at least 2 years per gig, there is plenty of time to build your own escape tunnel. Give it

Perhaps you have never understood what it is to have secure employment and to have the ability to plan long-term with more certainty than any consultancy would allow.

"Job Security" means your employer is underpaying you so much he can afford you keep you around no matter what happens. There is no free lunch. Nobody is being nice to you. It just means you earn so little, it's cheaper to keep paying you than to hire and train someone else.

My wife's current job hunt has produced two offers: $73K working for the state, or $240K at a private company. Same job, same applicant pool, same requirements. The non-salary benefits are comparable. The only difference is the state job is practically guaranteed for life, but the private sector job could be 6 months or 15 years.

In financial terms, "job security" is just an insurance policy. The premiums get deducted from your paycheck and you never even see them. How much is it costing you? If you don't know the amount off the top of your head, it's likely to be costing you far more than you would ever imagine.

That job security also brings in benefits of scale which do not come with consultancy. That's where your high pay ends up going - along with a more pronounced instability that makes Fukushima or Chernobyl look solid as a rock.

If you want to think of it as an underpayment, you're forgetting about the security and scale of a regular, non-fixed-term job.

Re: you're a frustrated high school student..
Hey, I resent that! Don't lump those idiotic ACs in with frustrated high-school students! That insults those of us who happen to still be in HS as students!!;>) I am a frustrated high-school student, yet I
1) Do not post as AC, but instead have a registered login account.
2) Don't go around saying things about other people that I do not know are true.
3) I do back up what I say usually with pointers to Wikipedia articles (e.g. "see the article about unfun [wikipedia.org]

Allowing the erosion in the first place.Not re-establishing the idea of secure, direct-hire employment for all and ensuring that it cannot be evaded.Making it living hell for offshore outsourcing, much less inshore as well.Fixed-term/outsourced workers making it worse by their presence

.
I've worked at a couple of Fortune 10 corporations (basement to lofty offices), private manufacturing businesses (many capacities), and consulting (domestic and international small to large corporations). My plan has been to seek freedom and adventure. Yours might be something else. But these were my reasons:.
Early on while at one of the big-co's a co-worker went around and asked many in the department what they made when they first started at the company and what year they hired in. All these people ap

Repeat until you understand: 'There is no such thing as permanent employment.'

True, but there is a world of difference in what you can plan if the interval is 20 years vs 2 years vs 2 months.

At two months, you are always selling, which is a whole job unto itself (often a hated one) on top of the "real" job.At two years, you never forget about the selling but you don't have to deal with it all the time. Makes it hard to make long term commitments though.At 20 years, long term commitments are pretty easy and you can actually forget about selling. This can be a problem when it actuall

True, but there is a world of difference in what you can plan if the interval is 20 years vs 2 years vs 2 months.

At two months, you are always selling, which is a whole job unto itself (often a hated one) on top of the "real" job.At two years, you never forget about the selling but you don't have to deal with it all the time. Makes it hard to make long term commitments though.At 20 years, long term commitments are pretty easy and you can actually forget about selling. This can be a problem when it actually ends.

But there is no such thing as an interval of 20 years, or even 2 years for that matter. At any point in time, even the very next day an employer can say to you "Sorry, your redundant". So to actually believe you have even 2 years of job security is a pure fantasy.

I have been a contractor for 15 years and have planned for 15 years because I know from practical experience that I have more job security doing what I do than any person who has what they call permanent employment. When I move to another contract I bring with me a wealth and bredth of experience, plus a guaranteed track record that practically ensures me a job, plus recent and repeated interview practice.... those with permanent employment are out of touch with interviewing, and only have a stagnant and unchanging level of experience where they have sat there doing the same thing day in and day out for years.

The simple fact is, nobody knows what will happen tomorrow, its the tools and experience you build TODAY which will give you more security than some misguided belief that your permanency equates to anything.

Even take redundancy.... people may argue that if they are made redundant they are given a payout which gives them time to find a new job... sorry to burst your bubble, but I earn 3 times what permanents earn, I have already built up that buffer several times over, so I have already put a contingency in place in the event I am without work (something that has only happened a total of about 8 weeks in 15 years), while those who foolishly believe they are "safe" don't have any contingency in place at all, nor have the funds available to put one in to cover them in the worst case.

I am staggered that people cannot see this? thought meta-thinking about it, I guess for those who ARE permanent, they have to believe that being permanent is the best option, otherwise they would be admitting to themselves they are not achieving their own potential and are purposely undercutting themselves. So it is easier to generate justifications for them staying where they are, than actually admitting they lack the confidence and belief in their own skills that they would be able to maintain a contracting lifestyle.

Don't get me wrong... there is nothing wrong with working a straight 9-to-5 if thats what suits you... but please don't try to convince yourself there is any more safety in it than there is in contract work.... and certanily don't try to convince yourself that you even have an interval of 2 years in which you can plan.... Do you know how many people will be fired tomorrow who thought they had 2 years? EVERYBODY thinks they have time right up until they are put off, and yuo have absolutely no control over how/when/where this will happen. So if you think its better to just cilng to the belief you are safe rather than actually developing your career around overcoming any possible outcome IN ADVANCE.... my hat off to you!

Totally accurate and insightful, and only moderated 1... I too have had both "permanent" jobs, and consulting, and right now I am doing consulting. And I am busy as hell. Oh, and I am 45, so no one is supposed to be giving me a job... The fact is that anyone can come up with reasons NOT to do something. I am doing something that not only suits me, but pays me well.

The simple fact is, nobody knows what will happen tomorrow, its the tools and experience you build TODAY which will give you more security than some misguided belief that your permanency equates to anything.

Although you have it 100% absolutely correct, you make the mistake of drastically overstating the odds of a 9-to-5 declaring you redundant "tomorrow". Yes, it can happen. Yes, it will happen to most of us at least a few times in our lives. Yes, it might even happen after a week on the job; but if y

But there is no such thing as an interval of 20 years, or even 2 years for that matter. At any point in time, even the very next day an employer can say to you "Sorry, your redundant". So to actually believe you have even 2 years of job security is a pure fantasy.

If you are at a company older than 5 years, growing at 20% per year or higher, and you are one of the drivers of the growth, then I would say you have close to 99% chance of keeping your job. If you are working for a company that is down 20% year over year then start looking now and do not make the same mistake again. Treat the interview process as you interviewing the company. You cannot get it right every time, but most people do not even try to figure out the trajectory a prospective employer is on. Simp

You can buy "benefit packages." How long do you have to get extra payment to pay for it? Generally about $300 a month will cover most benefits at reasonable companies. Less for the crap some places are trying to pass off as insurance.

Trust me - benefits cost a lot more than $300 a month.
The benefits that I pay for my $35k entry level employee add up to about $14k per year on top of the salary - and about half of that scales linearly with salary.
Benefits include retirement (10% of salary), health insurance (>$300 a month even for an individual if you're providing decent insurance), contributions to social security and medicare, disability insurance, life insurance, unemployment insurance, and a couple of others that I am sure I'm

You are confusing "what it costs you" to "what it costs to replace." The costs to replace "social security and medicare, disability insurance, life insurance, unemployment insurance, and a couple of others" is self employment insurance. And reasonable health insurance in Texas can be had for under $500 a month, half of which you pay anyway, so net of $250. More of your expenses are write offs, so that offsets some as well. Now in some places, those numbers are very different... But I live in Texas, so

People who can't do their jobs in the work place won't be able to do their jobs as consultants and thus fail to build a network... this is fact. It's not for the retarded so to say. But... what benefits? The benefit of waking up to the grind each morning, the benefit of having some dumbshits who call themselves bosses tell you what to do and how to act 8-5 mon-fri, so you can come home and... I'll refrain from quoting fight club here:)

The perm side of the coin from what I've seen involves people being scared shitless for their jobs thinking that worrying is going to bring them job security and some also work a lot of free overtime as non-exempt full-timers (the majority of IT's workforce).

While contractors have to by large worry even more since they have none of the benefits from being a regular employee but have all the costs and instabilities placed onto them.

On fast development projects, a large body of the contractors get to do work, collect the bonus, and then move on leaving a pile of crap for the employees to maintain and actually work to make functional.

A contractor is brought in to do a specific task for a (usually) predetermined amount of time. A consultant is brought in to asses an organization, develop a solution based on that assessment, and hire contractors to come in and implement their specific tasks for a predetermined amount of time. A contractor usually works a shift and as such can't have any other work while they are on a contract. A consultant can have multiple clients simultaneously and may not visit the client regularly if the job does not

Permanency and economies of scale make for mighty convincing arguments. That, and contract workers are generally worse off than regular employees - with exceptions such as yourself - since they are used to dodge some law instead of provide the flexibility claimed to a worker.

For each one of you, there are more people that end up on the wrong end of contract employment. Now if Right to Work applied to contractors (read: you weren't forced to be a contractor but could choose to be a directly hired FT worke

Permanency and economies of scale make for mighty convincing arguments. That, and contract workers are generally worse off than regular employees - with exceptions such as yourself - since they are used to dodge some law instead of provide the flexibility claimed to a worker.

Only contractors that are faux employees. I don't do that. It sucks. I am job based, and have a handful of clients that I juggle. If one gets to be a problem, no problem.

For awhile, anyway. Once Obama has everybody properly collared and leashed, and they roll out single-payer, the Insurance Companies are out of business.

Not entirely a bad thing, because Insurance companies are leeches, but that's the deal coming up.

I sure hope you're right. Single payer is so obviously the right way to go. It's a shame that so many of you are either brainwashed or collared and leashed by those who feather their nests by ripping you off.

It gives benefits to the old/sick people at the expense of the young/healthy people. That's the whole point of forcing everyone to buy the insurance, whether they want/need it or not.

Yes. It's called the Social Contract [wikipedia.org]. We give up some liberty and treasure to society, so that the society we live in can be enhanced *for all of us*. Those young, healthy people will one day be old and infirm. Or are you unable to grasp the cycle of life?

If it ends up anything like the UK's system of National Insurance and the NHS then you pay a trivial amount (~$5/month) for reasonably comprehensive healthcare, plus unemployment benefit, state pension etc. It's a better deal than I could find with any private company by a long way.

No, I'm just pointing out that it only works well for a few people and that it doesn't compare well to more permanent employment.

You got that right! Although, not the way you intended. There is a reason people who leave the traditional job market for consultancy rarely go back. (I did twice because I hate sales, but I couldn't stay. I hated "regular job" more.)

No, no...we consultants want you right where you are.:-) You are easy to replace when discussing your inability to work with the rest of your team with that attitude. We're good with that - keep it up.

What? Are you nuts? I don't want to replace him. I just want to fix the problems around him and move on. If I wanted that kind of job, I would have one.

You resent that job security ever existed and wish to see it gone because you didn't have it. Pity that you never got to see a benefit.

Yet the laugh that permanent workers have is when the come out ahead for everything despite having a lower initial paycheck. That, and permanent workers are the last to go while consultants, temps and other second-class citizens are considered cannon fodder.

You resent that job security ever existed and wish to see it gone because you didn't have it. Pity that you never got to see a benefit.

Job Security never existed outside the minds of the deluded employees. Look for the contractor that has been though a few busts and still has a nice car and dresses well. We know more about busts that you. We have had to clean them up. We have job security because we know how to get and complete a job, even in lean times.

do things others are unwilling to do in IT = Impossible dead lines , hack jobs that just lead to big issues down the road, going behind the back of the higher up, working under the table, braking the law and so on.

Its more about bringing the wealth of experience that you get contracting to bear on problems and tasks that permanents tend to shy away from. The number of times I have heard a permanent staff member go "thats not my job" or "I'm not paid to do that" is amazing. When you contract, you are exposed to so many different areas, different solutions, different methods, as well as the experience you gain from being able to solve problems that others have already failed to do. You reach this point where someone has a job that other (ie permanents) are unwilling to do because it is stepping too far out of their comfort zone and you can just step in, do the job, get it done RIGHT and get out.

Why did you post AC, my brother from another mother? Everything you said was so true. I was on a contract as the network expert. I was trying to implement something and needed input from the regular team. However, they were slammed that day with desktop support issues. A user came in with a printer problem. Everyone was busy, other than me waiting on them. So I went and fixed the printer... Why? Because I could. Because no one else was available. Because I was waiting for the others to free up. A

Since you don't want to attribute it to anyone, that's just the opinion of an anonymous coward.

As for second class citizen, they're the first to be removed and generally are brought on to dodge some benefit or legal requirement. While there may be some benefits, the flexibility gained is generally lost for most people.

As for second class citizen, they're the first to be removed and generally are brought on to dodge some benefit or legal requirement. While there may be some benefits, the flexibility gained is generally lost for most people.

You mean first to leave as we can more easily line up a new job. As companies spiral down, do you really want to be the last to go? (With the 60 hours weeks and the three jobs under one salary?)

PHD is over kill for most IT jobs and one can be a trun off to HR as you come off as needing a very high pay.M

This isn't about becoming an employee - this is about going independent. And that PhD impresses the hell out of people looking to hire a consultant - it ain't HR making that decision, it is a nervous nelly exec. They like that stuff because it gives them CYA - if you screw up they can say, "don't blame me, he had great credentials."

I don't have a PhD, but before I retired I was raking in the bucks (lawyer level hourly rates) to serve as little more than a security blanket for middle level management. I w

What IT needs is to make it so you know your shit stepping out into the real world, most 1st year workers get hit with cold water stepping out from the safety of the school lab into production data used by hundreds at once (if it's thousands+ please don't let 1st year workers get at it). Don't know anybody with a PHD in computers... but doctors require a PHD and computers aren't people, so I'd have to agree a PHD is overkill, but it amazes me how many people work in IT without a degree, I think that self-l

I do not agree. Most people below PhD-Level are unable to do reasonable design and architecture. And those are the things that kill expensive projects if done wrong. The "hands on" trained people I have seen turn out chaotic systems that become unmaintainable some times even before they are finished. Of course, it depends on the quality of the PhD. A good PhD teaches you humility, and that a systematic and clean approach is everything. A bad one is just a waste of time.

A PhD means you've been trained to do academic research, and mapping that skill set to non-academic environments can be problematical at best (especially in CS). While you might assume that someone who has earned a PhD is more able to do things like "reasonable design and architecture", many employers will assume the opposite: that you live in a world of abstract algorithmics, and the mundane skills involved in producing real software are beneath you. Both assumptions are equally bogus.

I should clarify: I was talking about an engineering PhD in CS, i.e. you not only designed something new and complex, you built it and operated it to demonstrate a new scientific fact in a process lasting several years. Then you described it well. This gives you, among other things, a real appreciations for mundane things like implementing algorithms in a context that works to produce something or creating documentation that describes what you did well.

The best part about being a consultant is that you never... ever... never ever... have to deal with HR. Makes me smile just saying it.:)

There's a lot of very nice young women in HR.

Except in IT, where a lot of companies use HR and other internal functions as the dumping ground for post-maternity-leave female employees when project managers (erroneously) assume that their skills are out-of-date so refuse to take them on....

Only once. Then we learn about thing like "work orders" and "mechanic's leans." Admittedly, you can only use those when you never plan to go back... But by the time you need to, you are never going back anyway.

Offtopic, but shouldn't that be "Deja FUBAR" [wikipedia.org] (Fouled/F***** up beyond all recognition)? "Foobar" [wikipedia.org] is a metasyntactic variable(s) that might be derived from the former acronym, but doesn't have the same meaning.

.... A lot of "I'm so awesome because I've figured out this obvious thing all on my own" and not much "here's how you can be awesome too"...

I did short term 'gigs' as an IT guy back in the early 90's... I was getting $150/hr back then resurrecting SunOS filesystems, setting up backup regimens, installing new disks, NIS, plotters, firewalls, blah blah blah... The problem with it is, while the money is great, it's rarely for a full 40 hour week because someone wants you to come over tuesday at 9:30 to upgrade a disk in some computer... You haven't started bright and early and it should take you a couple hours unless something goes wrong, so you can't book something else until maybe late afternoon the same day... Suddenly you find you've made $300 that day, or maybe $600 if you're lucky... Lots of 1-2hr billable days... Sometimes you score and get a couple of 15 hour weeks... You're still making chump change and you're generating a lot of small invoices... Sure, it's 20 years later so your billable rate has gone up but your cost of living has as well... You're good so you get a lot of word-of-mouth new clients and if you don't piss off any of the existing ones, you should be able to be fairly busy; but there's still a limit to what you can reasonably do in a single day...

Cut forward, and I picked up some 1-3 month 'gigs'... Good money. But suddenly you've lost your big handful of faithful clients because you're stuck servicing one client for 3 months so your other clients have lined up other people to do their small work... Now you've got to line up your next gig after you've finished the present one... It's rare to go from gig to gig so you end up sitting around for a month, maybe picking up a few short day things at $200/hr... You're still not breaking 6 figures... (again, this is now the late 90s early 2000's)...

Now I've got a 5 year contract gig at an embedded linux shop doing board bringups, bsp's, drivers, et'al... This has been super lucrative, super easy, relatively interesting, and I get to go home at the end of the day not thinking about work....

start up some dopey service called CodeMyDesigns [codemydesigns.com] specializing in Drupal (or whatever the latest trend is), write a book [slashdot.org] on the subject, and then charge a flat rate 15-30k to develop a site that takes 40-80 hours to build (make sure to stretch those hours over a month or two and make sure to cover your ass for scope creep in the SOW at $162/hr).

It's easy to break 6 figures, you just need a niche market, a decent website, and personalized service better than your competitors.

Why go through all that trouble though? Sure, its easy, but its a heck of a lot easier to just get a normal job and do the same with all the benefits of being salaried (paid time off, insurance, blah blah).

To be successful, you either have to really get technology (most IT "experts" are at best semi-competent) or really understand the business side of things (same problem). No fast training course can get that for you. You either have it or not. This is your tun-of-the-mill get-rich-quick rip-off.

I was an IT consultant for many, many years and was quite successful. That being said, there are very few people who should, or even could, do it.

First, for most consulting gigs, you are constantly one day away from being unemployed. That's stress. Assuming you are very good at what you do, gigs can last for years. But some don't last long at all and some end quite abruptly for reasons outside of your control.

You have to have a great network for your next consulting gig. If you have to start looking from scratch after your current assignment ends, you will have long stretches between assignments.

You don't get paid for sick days, vacations, holidays. You don't have benefits. Your taxes are usually higher and there is no withholding so you must plan ahead. It takes a lot of work and a lot of discipline to be a successful consultant. The idea that "anyone can be a successful consultant" is complete bullshit.

I don't do that any more. The many years I spent as an independent consultant were fine -- but enough.

I spent 25 years in IT consultancy before starting my own business. The following are my tips:

1) Be diplomatic and respectful. Employees are almost always suspicious of consultants and rightly so. You need to deliver, work hard and earn their respect. Listen to them. You will learn a lot.

2) Develop a reputation. See above.

3) Learn a business domain. This is a must. Financial, Insurance, whatever. You must acquire that domain knowledge not to be expendable. They pay for the combination. You will go through multiple business domains in the initial phases of your career. Pick one that you like and will make you the most money and stick with it. It might take years but this key.

4) Work for large enterprises. They have the money. Startups can make you ultra-rich but the odds are against you.

5) Learn real languages. Yes Plural. JavaScript, Python and other scripting languages are useful but not sufficient. Java, C, C++ are a must.

but then people would figure out that you're just really trying to sell your books by trolling slashdot about easy way to make money. this dude is a journalist/self promoter first and an it professional second.

I started my IT career doing in house IT. That gig lasted for three years and then I began consulting in the employ of a former KPMG guy who started his practice in 1989. I began working for him just in 2000, more or less as the dotcom bubble was beginning to burst. He had a very diverse client base and we were able to ride out the down turn. In 2007 I was tired of the feast or famine culture of small business consulting so I went to work full time for one of our clients. After three years there, I mov